Marc F. Bellemare Posts

I spent Monday of last week in Rome to talk about food waste with policy makers and a handful of other researchers who have worked on the topic. As I sat there, one thing occurred to me about the work I have done on the topic with my Minnesota colleagues which in retrospect, I really wish we had had the presence of mind to include in the paper.

When it comes to food waste, the world is split into two categories: 1. Those who think food waste is a huge problem which policy makers have to tackle, and 2. Those who think food waste is likely a problem, but one that is nowhere near as important as those in category 1 would have you believe.

Given the work I have done on the topic, I fall squarely in category 2. Recall that my work on the topic (link opens a .pdf) says that the quantity of food waste is vastly overstated because of the definitions used. Worse, my work says that the value of food waste is even more overstated because it multiplies the aforementioned overstated quantity by retail prices when, in fact, food items are often wasted well before the retail stage.

Both articles are by me and a coauthor. The first article (gated; email me for a copy) is a review of the economics literature on contract farming, in which Jeff Bloem and I look at whether participation in contract farming and agricultural value chains improves welfare. On the basis of the literature, our answer is “Most likely, but it’s hard to know for sure.”

Here is the abstract:

In January 2013, I wrote a post titled Quinoa Nonsense, of Why the World Still Needs Agricultural Economists. That was the second one of my posts to go viral.*

And did that post ever take me places–both figuratively and literally.

It figuratively took me places, because after I wrote that post, Seth Gitter got in touch with me to mention he’d been meaning to look at the effects of the quinoa price spike, and to ask whether I’d be interested in collaborating on that. Because of the same post, The Economist ran an article in their Leaders section last year titled “In praise of quinoa,” in which they were talking about the wonders of international trade, and in which they name-checked me. (In the same article, they also name-checked Saddam Hussein and Donald Trump, so make of that what you will.)

And it literally took me places, because Seth and I were soon thereafter flying to Peru to consult for the International Trade Center on the welfare impacts of the quinoa price spike. That was the first of several trips to Peru, a country where I am planning on doing more work as early as next summer.

In my January 2013 post, I ranted against journalists who present uninformed, sloppy thoughts as gospel. My foremost example then was this excerpt from an article in the Guardian: